On Feb. 11 Pres. and Sister Jameson invited the three outlying couples to come to Kinshasa for a conference, to see the mission home and meet the other 3 couples in the office. We flew to Pointe Noire, had an unexpected 3 hour layover waiting for more passengers to fill up the plane and then flew on to Brazzaville. We stayed overnight at a really nice hotel and got on a small boat with about 10 people to cross this Congo River. The city across the river is Kinshasa. It has 12 million people, and now has 7 Stakes. We were met at every stop by church leaders who made sure we got where we needed to go safely.
Elder Billings, on the left, has been called to start a pilot program for the church. He was a teacher at Salt Lake Comm. College in construction. He has been called to teach young men, returned missionaries, construction skills. His wife teaches family history and researching family name to the members. The students learn to make their own cinder blocks and how to construct buildings. Sister Gailey is trying her hand at cinderblock making. They are actually building a building for the church here in these photos. The church is trying to teach RM’s skills so they can earn a living and provide for their families. There is one sister in their group.
This is one of the buildings they are building with handmade cinderblocks. They can make up to 3oo in a day when they really get going.
Of course, I was most interested in checking out the plumbing. Here they are pouring concrete that they mix by hand.
The next day Elder and Sister Moon took us on a field trip to see what they are doing for humanitarian work in our mission. We drove along a road for about 30 minutes out of Kinshasa to a water well project that the church did a few years ago. As we drove we started waving to all the children along the way. They started following and the adults had to part them for us to drive through. When we stopped we started shaking their hands and they just mobbed us. It was so humbling to see how they lived. They were so anxious to touch us and have their picture taken with us. I don’t think they really knew who we were, or that our church had provided them with clean drinking water.
Sister Gailey was hesitant to touch them at first, but they soon were crawling all over her and she was loving it. They are so beautiful and loving.
We parked the cars and walked a little way down a path to where the well was. There is a large tank built up on concrete legs that a well 120 feed in the ground pumps water up to. It then comes down a pipe and underground and up to these spigots. There were many women filling jugs with clean water and carrying it off to their homes on their heads. We were told that water borne illness in the area has dropped by 40 % since the well was provided. Before they were drinking out of ditches that were filled with garbage.
In the same area, the church has build some restrooms for the people to use. The name of the church is on the building.
As we loaded up and drove away, the children ran after us. We left, never to be the same.
In Kinshasa, they created 2 new stakes this past year, bringing the total to 7. There are now as many here as there are in Johannesburg, where the church has been for a lot longer. This is a chapel on the main road to the airport. It has been named the Nauvoo temple by the American missionaries. It has parking under on the first floor and the chapel is on the 2nd floor.
This is the three outlying couples, who with us, live hours away from the mission home, The Wheatleys, on the left, who are from Clinton, Utah, live in the Central African Republic in Pointe Noire, and The Whitesides, on the right, are from Layton and live in Yaounde in Cameroon about 4 hours drive from us in Douala. We have 5 different countries in our mission. Right now we have 8 missionaries living in Douala and they are from 5 different countries.
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